Examining children with sluggish cognitive tempoaccompanying attention deficit hyperactivity disorderin terms of emotion regulation difficulties

Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or Sluggish Cognitive Tempo may experience impaired social functioning and problems in emotion regulation, which may be a mediator of impaired social functioning. In our study, it was aimed to examine the Sluggish Cognitive Tempo accompanying the diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in terms of emotion recognition/understanding, emotional reactivity/negativity/lability, emotion-regulation, empathy/callous-unemotional traits characteristics that play a role in emotion regulation, and to guide treatment planning in the future. Our study included 30 children with a diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and 20 children with a Sluggish Cognitive Tempo accompanying the diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Between the ages of 8-12 and who met the inclusion and exclusion criteria, and admitted to Tekirdağ Namık Kemal University Hospital's Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Department. Study has been designed as two different groups. Forms and scales used in this study consisted of Barkley Child Attention Scale, Emotion Regulation Q-Scale, Turkish version of Empathy for Children and Adolescents Scale, Hollinngshead-Redich Scale, Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children-Present and Lifetime Version, DSM-5 (Turkish adaptation), Clinical Global Impression Scale, Test of Perception of Affect Via Nonverbal Cue-mimics section, Turgay DSM-IV Based Distruptive Behavior Disorders Child and Adolescent Screening and Rating Scale, Informed Consent Form and Sociodemographic Form. It was found that the group in which Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder was accompanied by Sluggish Cognitive Tempo differed from the group with only Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in terms of emotion regulation subscale scores of emotion regulation scale and empathy scale scores. When Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder attention deficit dominant appearance was controlled in groups, emotion regulation and empathy components still differed significantly in the group which accompanied by Sluggish Cognitive Tempo.